National Geographic News, Reporting Your World Daily

Monday, November 23, 2009

Photo: Tut Move Designed to Save Mummy


Email to a Friend	<< Back to Full Story

Egyptian antiquities chief Zahi Hawass shows off the linen-wrapped mummy of King Tut in his new high-tech display case.

The body was moved on November 4, 2007, from an inner sarcophagus to the antechamber of Tut's tomb, located in the famed Valley of the Kings near Luxor, Egypt. While generating tourist revenue is one reason for the move, experts say the new case will also serve to protect a mummy so damaged by heat and humidity that it could otherwise have crumbled to dust in a few decades.

AP Photograph/Ben Curtis, Pool